The latest update from explorer/environmentalist Will Steger comes from Earth Day (this past Sunday) on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. As you might remember from our previous posts, Steger is leading a team of three other explorers and educators and four native Inuits on a four-month-long, dog-sled expedition across the island.
Listen to Steger’s Earth Day audio update:
“This is basically Ground Zero for global warming. It’s being played out to a large degree in the sea ice. As the ocean warms from the carbon dioxide blanket effect heating the globe, heat goes into the ocean. Because of this, we’re getting later freeze-ups.”
Steger says the local culture is really starting to feel the effects because the Inuits rely so much on the ice as a means of transportation and as their hunting platform.
But Steger points out there is hope. He says even the little decisions we make everyday can make a change… energy efficient light bulbs, using less power, etc. He says, however, the time to act is now, because there might be less than 10 years before the effects are felt worldwide.
“Some of the native people up here say ‘Global warming is affecting us here, but what people in the South don’t realize, it will soon affect (them)’ ”
The expedition and its educational efforts are being supported by the ethanol industry through the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council and Fagen Inc.
See Steger’s Earth Day video here.
Kansas City consumers can follow in the footsteps of the IndyCar® Series and make a choice at the pump for energy independence and cleaner air. E10, a blend of 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol, will be available for $2.14, the average qualifying speed for the Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway, on Thursday at two locations in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area and #17 Team Ethanol Driver Jeff Simmons will be signing autographs.
The 
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson calls the nation’s first comprehensive Renewable Fuels Standard, or RFS, “a hat trick – it protects the environment, strengthens our energy security, and supports America’s farmers.”
Four New Holland tractors are the first tractors that run on 100% biodiesel to arrive in the United Kingdom to work at Cornwall’s Eden Project, “an environmentally-focused attraction all about man’s relationship with plants and the environment.”
“There appears to be abuse that demands legislative correction,” said Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett, who is drafting a measure to overturn the IRS rule with Representative John Larson of Connecticut. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, said yesterday during a Finance Committee hearing that the companies tried to “go around” Congress and that the tax credit needs to be “re-examined.”
On the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Friday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) called for a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard (NLCFS) similar to one created in California earlier this year by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.